With the advent of the “Internet of Things” or the “Internet of Everything” such as networks of smart objects in the home, office, or facility, the need for simplified interactions with smart objects is rapidly increasing. To facilitate internetworked smart objects and control devices, various communication protocols have been developed. However, these communication protocols may not fully address challenges associated with interacting with smart objects. Further, these protocols may not fully exploit the capabilities presented by such networks of smart objects.
In a conventional communication protocol for communicating and/or networking with smart objects, a user interacts with smart objects that are connected to a network by addressing the object according to a generic name that is assigned during a registration process. The smart objects then appear by name on an application display of the control device. When many controllable smart objects having a generic or default name are present in the network, a user-interface challenge arises as users may be frustrated by a long list of all the objects connected in the network. It becomes difficult for users (i.e., humans) to distinguish smart objects that may appear on a display or in a physical space for purposes of selecting individual devices for control. If a specific kind of control is desired for smart objects having a specific object type, such as smart light bulbs, or a subset of specific objects, a particular group of smart light bulbs, challenges may increase.
Interaction with a device may be difficult because the association between the generic names and the actual objects in a space are difficult to ascertain. Further, the particular objects within the space that are targets for interaction, are not always easily known by the user based simply on seeing the generic name listing in a user interface. When sufficiently large numbers of smart objects of the same object type (e.g., same as the object type in the subset of smart objects targeted for interaction) are present in the home or facility (e.g., in different rooms and levels), it becomes even more challenging for users to know the association between generic names and actual smart objects. In particular, because the generic name may not be sufficiently descriptive (e.g., SmartBulb1, Smartbulb2, . . . ) a user may have difficulty determining which smart object name to select for interactions with a particular smart object of interest.
Interaction and control of smart objects may typically be provided by radio-frequency (RF) networks (e.g., WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.) based on application interfaces to communication resources and object features provided by a communication protocol that may provide a networking framework for inter-networking smart objects. Within such protocol frameworks, user interactions with smart objects rely on addressing the objects using RF communications. With the ability to individually address smart objects, users can control an object simply by selecting the smart object based on its name and then entering a command, such as pressing a virtual key on a smart phone to cause the smart object to take an action, change its state or status, report a condition, and so on, based on RF communications addressed to and received from the selected smart object. A user may thereby individually control/interact with any smart object in a network within range of the RF communications and registered with a communication protocol framework. In most cases, such RF communications penetrate walls and floors and provide access to all smart objects in RF communications range in the home or facility. However, this capability makes it difficult to distinguish objects within a single room for room-specific addressing and control.